


Equinox

by SydneyLouWho



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ((pre-8x03)), (well at this point), Canon Compliant, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Post-Canon, This Is A Spitefic, and by that i mean I'm fixing things that haven't even happened yet, because I know they'll be a mess-and-a-half
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 17:20:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18627754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SydneyLouWho/pseuds/SydneyLouWho
Summary: After the war, Jon and Daenerys must make a choice.





	Equinox

**Author's Note:**

> Plain and simple, this is a spitefic. I think the show's Cersei pregnancy plot was a big mistake that even the writers don't know how to handle. It's messy. Jaime seems to really think it's real, but Cersei was drinking despite it being established last season that she knows not to drink during pregnancy. Plus, she's not even showing, so who knows what's going on. I'm pretty sure it'll be revealed at some point that the pregnancy was a lie, but then I was thinking. Cersei and Jaime's baby could make a pretty poetic plotline, if they allowed it. So I wrote it. This is going to be a major canon divergence in an episode or two, I'm sure.
> 
> As always, thanks so much to Laurel (samwpmarleau on tumblr, grumkin_snark on here), for helping me with plot details and betaing. And thanks to Lauren (joannalannister on tumblr, tywinning on here) for helping with Lannister names.

The Lannister twins had come into the world together, and now they burn together on their pyre, ashes floating in the wind.

Dany supposes there’s a twisted sort of justice in that.

She glances around. Few have shown up for the occasion, but among them is her Hand, their brother, who stands steel-faced, staring at a point in the fire lower than the pyre. She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. She knows, more than most, the feeling of losing your family, no matter the pain they’ve caused you. Beside him stands Ser Brienne, who seems to have fostered a friendship with Tyrion during the long journey south. Her eyes remain downcast as well, and dry. But Dany knows Brienne has shed her tears in private. She cannot blame her.

Dany, too, has loved a man she shouldn’t.

When it is over, the small group wordlessly heads back to the keep. Nothing is left of the golden twins now but their little brother. Their little brother, and a baby.

The infant’s fate is theirs to decide.

 

Jon joins her when she goes to the nursery. The Lannister child is the only one there, and has just finished with the wet nurse when they arrive.

Dany looks down into the cradle, where the baby blinks at her with wide eyes. A girl. She does not know what Cersei named her, and there is no one else to ask.

The blonde-haired babe looks so innocent in her cradle. She doesn’t yet know of her parents’ crimes, or their deaths. She wonders if someone had looked at her in the cradle, too, and thought, “This is a child of tragedy.” Dany’s hands clutch the wooden edge of the cradle to keep her from the overwhelming urge to reach in.

“My bannermen want her dead,” Jon says, breaking the heavy silence.

“And what do you want?” She looks up at Jon hoping she knows the answer. The baby gurgles below them.

Jon is silent for a moment and looks back down at the babe, shaking his head. “I cannot help but think of other children, long ago, at the end of a different war.”

“Us.” And Rhaenys and Aegon, who weren’t so lucky.

“We were born with nooses around our necks. They would have killed us if they could, for crimes that occurred before we were born. They thought we were dangerous. But I’ve found I’m not much like my father.”

“Nor I like mine.”

“She is innocent.”

“As were we.” Dany’s hand moves to her own swelling belly. “And if the tides had been turned, I would have wanted them to afford our child the same mercy.” Though they both know the truth. Cersei Lannister was not a woman prone to acts of mercy. She shivers at the thought of the Lannister woman peering down into her child’s cradle.

_Things will be different now, in my new kingdom._

Dany lets out a breath and allows herself now to reach down into the cradle. She only intends to let the child grab her finger, but almost on instinct she lifts up the infant and holds her to her chest. She is tiny and warm, and her hand reaches up and grasps a silver curl.

She smiles slightly, and looks up to see that Jon is smiling too. “She won’t be a baby forever,” she says, unsure if she wants to remind Jon or herself. “She could grow into a danger. We could send her to be raised elsewhere, but who would claim her? The Lannisters have no friends left in the world.”

“They have two,” Jon reminds her.

Dany brushes a finger along the girl’s nose, and the babe nestles into her chest. “Ser Brienne would offer, I’m sure, but it wouldn’t be fair to her. She is a _knight_ , and wishes to stay at your sisters’ side, but Winterfell is no place for a Lannister child. And Tyrion…” He is her Hand and must stay with her. But this tiny child is the only true family he has left.

“Perhaps she will be better off here,” Jon says. “Keeping her close, she may not grow to hate us. We could oversee how she is raised.”

She looks down at the child, who still stares up at her with big green eyes, holding her hair in her tiny hand. “In truth, I find I am much more like the father who raised me than the one who gave me life.”

It is settled then. The child of their enemy, a _Lannister_  — no, not a Lannister, a _Hill_  — will grow up beside their own child. Dany cannot help but wonder if they, in their endless grief for those who they’ve lost, have grown too soft and foolish.

_Little child, please prove us wrong._

“She should have a name,” Jon says, moving closer.

“Tyrion should name her, I think, should he accept our offer.” Jon nods. The baby coos in her arms, almost as though she’s agreeing.

 

Tyrion names her Celine. Celine Hill, a name reminiscent of the westerlands, but new. New like a kingdom built on mercy, like the warmth of spring. The name won’t bring back any ghosts of the Lannisters’ past. Tyrion is immediately smitten.

Dany doesn’t tell him, but she thinks that if she grows into a fine, trustworthy woman, she might offer her Casterly Rock. Tyrion has no wife or heirs and there is no one else to claim it.

“What would Tywin Lannister have thought?” Jon had asked when she’d mentioned her thoughts to him. “His treasured seat held by a bastard with Hill as a name, and a woman at that.”

She had to admit that the thought of Tywin Lannister rolling in his grave made the idea much more appealing.

“She looks like Myrcella,” Tyrion says, as Celine gives him an open-mouthed smile, his finger gripped tightly in her hand. “You would have liked Myrcella. She was sweet and clever and _good_. Too good for this world, perhaps.”

Dany hopes, then, that little Celine will grow to be more like Myrcella than her mother.

All there is left to do is hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Before everyone yells at me, neither Jon nor Dany killed Cersei or Jaime in this fic.


End file.
